basic\ba"sic\ (&?;), a.1. (chem.) (a) relating to a base; performing the office of a base in a salt. (b) having the base in excess, or the amount of the base atomically greater than that of the acid, or exceeding in proportion that of the related neutral salt. (c) apparently alkaline, as certain normal salts which exhibit alkaline reactions with test paper.2. (min.) said of crystalline rocks which contain a relatively low percentage of silica, as basalt.basic salt (chem.), a salt formed from a base or hydroxide by the partial replacement of its hydrogen by a negative or acid element or radical.basic adj1. pertaining to or constituting a base or basis; "a basic fact"; "the basic ingredients"; "basic changes in public opinion occur because of changes in priorities" [ant: incidental]2. reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality; "a basic story line"; "a canonical syllable pattern" [syn: canonic, canonical]

5. (chemistry) of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base n 1: a popular programming language that is relatively easy to learn (beginner's all-purpose symbolic instruction code); no longer in general use [syn: basic] 2: (usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is constant [syn: staple]

MeaningA return to previously held values of decency.OriginThis became prominent in current language in the UK with a 1993 speech by UK prime minister John Major, although it has been used in every day language long before that.Major: "It is time to get back to basics: to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family, and not shuffling it off on the state"

/bay'-sic/ n. A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which for many years was the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros in the 1980s. As it is, it probably ruined tens of thousands of potential wizards.

[1995: Some languages called `BASIC' aren't quite this nasty any more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR]

Note: the name is commonly parsed as Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, but this is a backronym. BASIC was originally named Basic, simply because it was a simple and basic programming language. Because most programming language names were in fact acronyms, BASIC was often capitalized just out of habit or to be silly. No acronym for BASIC originally existed or was intended (as one can verify by reading texts through the early 1970s). Later, around the mid-1970s, people began to make up backronyms for BASIC because they weren't sure. Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code is the one that caught on.

(a.)
Said of crystalline rocks which contain a relatively low percentage of silica, as basalt. (a.)
Relating to a base; performing the office of a base in a salt. (a.)
Having the base in excess, or the amount of the base atomically greater than that of the acid, or exceeding in proportion that of the related neutral salt. (a.)
Apparently alkaline, as certain normal salts which exhibit alkaline reactions with test paper.

Acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Developed by John Kemeney and Thomas Kurtz in the mid 1960s at Dartmouth College, BASIC is one of the earliest and simplest high-level programming languages. During the 1970s, it was the principal programming language taught to students, and continues to be a popular choice among educators. Despite its simplicity, BASIC is used for a wide variety of business applications. There is an ANSI standard for the BASIC language, but most versions of BASIC include many proprietary extensions. Microsoft’s popular Visual Basic, for example, adds many object-oriented features to the standard BASIC.

Recently, many variations of BASIC have appeared as programming, or macro, languages within applications. For example, Microsoft Word and Excel both come with a version of BASIC with which users can write programs to customize and automate these applications.

Compare with acid . 1. a compound that reacts with an acid to form a salt . 2. a compound that produces hydroxide ions in aqueous solution (Arrhenius). 3. a molecule or ion that captures hydrogen ions.(Bronsted-Lowry). 4. a molecule or ion that donates an electron pair to form a chemical bond.(Lewis).

Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. A very popular programming language developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College in the 1960's. Their have been a number of implementations of basic over the years including :- Tiny Basic Microsoft Basic CBasic Integer Basic Applesoft Basic GW Basic Turbo Basic Microsoft QuickBasicHistorically, basic has been the programming language with which most people have got their first experience of programming.